By Nirmal Shah
A new preprint (not peer-reviewed yet) led by some great researchers says that fewer than 100,000 full-time workers are responsible for about 36 million square kilometres of MPAs, roughly one worker for every 370 square kilometres. On land, protected areas employ about 555,000 people across 20 million square kilometres, or one worker for every 37 square kilometres. The ocean is therefore being protected at roughly one-tenth the staffing density of land.
The gap is worse where it matters most. The paper estimates only about 28,000 on-site MPA workers, the equivalent of rangers, or one for every 1,275 square kilometres. Many MPAs lack dedicated capacity for surveillance, enforcement, monitoring, research, outreach, and adaptive management. Without them, MPAs risk becoming paper parks: declared, celebrated, and then left too weak to deliver ecological recovery or social benefit.
The paper’s recommendations are sensible and practical. The paper calls for far more site-level staff, especially rangers and guardians. It also says that structured involvement of fishers, divers, tourism operators, Indigenous stewards, community groups, students, and other ocean users could add to capacity, although I am skeptical about the feasibility of that
in Seychelles. It urges professional careers, safer jobs, better pay, stronger training, mentorship, certification, and clear career pathways. It also calls for technology that supports workers, not replaces them, and for monitoring systems that track governance, threats, compliance, outcomes, and socio-economic performance in near real time.
But the big gap is finance. Stable jobs cost money. Training, boats, fuel, equipment, data systems, safety protocols, enforcement, and community engagement cost money. From my own experience the most plausible reason the MPA workforce is inadequate is because MPA budgets are inadequate.
Ultimately, conservation finance must be systematically integrated into operational delivery. Without more money, these essential recommendations remain un-executable. We know what needs to be done but we don’t have the financial resources to do them. Back to square-one!
